Many concertgoers enter the Sydney Opera House not by climbing its scenic Monumental Steps but via a drab tarmac beneath those stairs, where they may be greeted by delivery trucks, cars and bikes.

In the years before his death in 2008, Danish architect Joern Utzon helped with plans to renew his "evolving" masterpiece building, and now a new generation of Danes – five exchange students – will attempt to enliven the forlorn space under the stairs.

Bound for Bennelong Point: Danish students Birthe Wohlenberg, Arnthrudur Gisladottir, Mai Alexandra Bogoe, Signe Moeller Rosendal and Mathias Oerumnoergaard are part of the Multidisciplinary Australian Danish Exchange, known as "MADE by the Opera House". Photo: Supplied

The house plans to transform the truck stop and unofficial parking lot into a destination in its own right for many of the 8.2 million people who visit the opera house each year, perhaps for small performances, pop-up exhibitions and educational programs.

It will become possible with the completion this year of an underground loading dock, which will be entered by a new tunnel from the bottom of Macquarie Street. That $120 million project, funded by the state government, will remove about 1000 heavy-vehicle movements a week from the opera house forecourt.

Enter the young Danes. Next month, the architecture, engineering and design students will arrive in Sydney as part of the Multidisciplinary Australian Danish Exchange, known as "MADE by the Opera House".

Since the house's 40th birthday in 2013, five Danish students travel to Sydney each year while five young Australians work for six weeks in Denmark in the same disciplines. Applications for the next cohort, who will travel to Denmark in January 2016, close on July 9.

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The young Danes' mission this year will be to contribute to "Under the Stairs".

"This is a highly relevant brief," says Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron, "challenging the Danish students to put forward meaningful design ideas for this important space".

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The collaboration would be gratifying for Utzon, the architect banished from the project seven years before the opera house opened in 1973.

He reconciled with Sydney before his death and the unfinished business at his World Heritage-listed house proceeds. This month it paid more than $400,000 at auction to acquire a Le Corbusier tapestry from Utzon's personal art collection, a work he had always intended would hang in the house.

Utzon commissioned it in 1958, a year after he won an international design commission to find the right architect for the opera house.

The tapestry will hang just up the stairs from the new attraction, Under the Stairs, in the box office foyer.